The Mexican-American War
Jason Kuznicki on May 13th 2008
Longtime blog friend Joshua Claybourn has a fantastic post about the Mexican-American War, one of the most unjust and unnecessary conflicts our nation has ever entered. An excerpt:
One aspect of this oft-forgotten war is that it was quite divisive in its day. Whigs, particularly those in the north, opposed the war. Yet southern Democrats, smitten with the notion of Manifest Destiny and our perceived God given right to own “sea to shining sea,” enthusiastically supported it. Such disagreements should not be glossed over. Abraham Lincoln, then a Congressman, remained forcefully skeptical about Mexico’s alleged instigation of armed hostilities. Others, such as former President John Quincy Adams, felt the whole affair was simply an effort to expand slavery.
I share John Quincy Adams’ opinion on the matter. Northerners came to speak of the “Slave Power” then running the country in part because they found that the South seemed able to make decisions as massive as going to war even when the rest of the country did not agree. (Likewise with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.) The Mexican-American War was also the reason why in 1846 Henry David Thoreau declined to pay his poll tax, instead spent a night in jail, and went on to write “Civil Disobedience,” one of the great American essays of all time.
And lastly, it is a remarkable testimony to the undemocratic nature of the antebellum South that the first president who was neither from the South nor a northerner willing to concede everything that the South demanded was Abraham Lincoln, and that the South immediately left the Union upon his election.
Filed in The Barracks
I like this approach. It’s much better than calling your opposition “doughfaces.” It’s what do you call it . . .
Ah yes, a rational argument.
Well, there certainly were secondary reasons for the war itself, like the propagation of slavery.
However, the 21st century mind sees borders first, then peoples. But the history of man indicates quite the opposite: peoples push each other to and fro, with borders only attending and remaining fluid.
The revisionist self-flagellation of America the Aggressor, the diseased product of the diseased concept of Manifest destiny, overlooks this dirty little fact—the Mexican government [independent itself only since 1821] “owned” what is now the southwestern United States only on paper. They couldn’t get any or many actual “Mexicans” to go settle there, which is why they opened Texas to the Euro-Americans [read "whites," although they brought their black slaves along].
Soon the Tejans got sick of the deal [and as always, there were economic hooks, like giving the Mexican government first look at their produce], fought and won independence, and then joined the United States in 1845.
The Mexican government didn’t recognize that fact on the ground, attacked the new shining state of Texas, and war soon followed.
If I may borrow from the Wiki here:
On 3 January 1823, Stephen F. Austin began a colony of 297 Anglo-American families known as the “Old Three Hundred” along the Brazos River, after he was authorized to do so by Governor Antonio María Martínez. By 1830, the 30,000 Anglo settlers in Texas outnumbered Tejanos six to one.
Yes, the big bad United States pushed Mexico around at perhaps a minor provocation, but “manifest destiny” was more an organic flow of one people over another, a process as old as human history itself.
Now that very process may be reversing itself in the American southwest. One who takes the long view of history may permit himself a chuckle.